You want to help your family. Someone you trust offers an opportunity to earn extra income, work from home, and become financially independent. They introduce you to enthusiastic people who seem to share your values. Perhaps they attend your house of worship.
Then you discover that making money requires recruiting other people. When the income fails to materialize, you are encouraged to buy more training, pay for coaching, and work on your lack of belief that you can become a millionaire by working part-time.
By this point, questioning the opportunity may feel like questioning your friends, your faith, or your own ability to succeed.
I have encountered these patterns for decades in my work with people harmed by commercial cults that do multi-level marketing (MLMs). Other varieties of commercial cults include trafficking and crypto. My guest on Cults, Culture & Coercion, Dr. William Keep, has spent decades examining the business practices behind them.
I have known Bill for many years through our shared concern about multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes. A former business school dean at the College of New Jersey, he has helped attorneys and government investigators evaluate these operations. Our conversation explored how financial deception works, why it can be so difficult to recognize from inside, and what happens when businesses gain influence over the institutions meant to protect us.
Following the Money Behind the Promise
Bill’s work on pyramid schemes began with a practical question. While he was teaching retailing at the University of Kentucky, the Department of Justice asked for help investigating a company that claimed to sell gold.
He did not yet know much about pyramid schemes. But he knew retailing, and he could examine whether the company was doing what it claimed.
That investigation began a much longer commitment to understanding deceptive business opportunities. Bill went on to coauthor research with FTC economist Peter Vander Nat and appeared in the documentary Betting on Zero, which focused on the MLM, Herbalife.
He also discussed AdvoCare, a company whose long history and industry recognition had offered an appearance of legitimacy. In 2019, AdvoCare and its former chief executive agreed to a settlement with the FTC, including $150 million and a ban from multi-level marketing, to resolve charges that the company operated an illegal pyramid scheme.
A company’s longevity does not answer the questions that matter to someone being recruited. Where does the money come from? What must participants spend? How many earn a profit after expenses? What happens when recruitment slows?
Those questions deserve clear answers before anyone commits their savings or brings in family and friends.
When Losing Money Becomes Your Fault
Bill described another source of income for people higher in these organizations: selling help to participants who are already struggling.
If you are not succeeding, perhaps you need another course. Recordings. Another coach. Another event.
The person losing money becomes a customer for the explanation of why they are losing money.
This is where my work and Bill’s intersect. A business analysis can expose problems in the compensation structure. Understanding undue influence helps explain why someone might keep paying despite mounting evidence that the opportunity is hurting them.
My BITE Model of Authoritarian Control examines behavior, information, thought, and emotional control. In a high-control commercial group, that can mean pressure to devote more time and money, dismiss outside criticism, repeat prescribed explanations, and feel ashamed of doubts.
Bill recommended that I interview Brandie Hadfield, whose experience I explored in “She Spent $115K in a Wellness Cult.” Her story shows how the promise of health, community, and meaningful work can keep someone invested long after the financial costs become painful.
Wanting a better life does not make someone foolish. That desire is precisely what the recruitment appeal reaches.
Faith and Family as Reasons to Say Yes
Bill explained how religious and family-centered messages can strengthen a business pitch. The offer becomes a way to earn money while supposedly honoring your deepest commitments.
As he put it:
“When you want to attract someone into something, you want to give them multiple reasons to say yes.”
A recommendation from someone at church arrives with trust already attached. A promise to spend more time with your children speaks to a real need. Those relationships and values can make it harder to examine the opportunity independently.
I have heard from people whose involvement in MLMs became intertwined with religious expectations. Asking whether the business works can begin to feel like a failure of faith in God.
My concern is the use of someone’s beliefs to discourage informed questioning. A person should be free to examine a compensation plan, consult unrelated sources, and decline an offer without feeling that they have betrayed God or their family.
What Bill Saw in NXIVM
Bill also described being asked to evaluate an economic analysis in litigation involving NXIVM, before the public revelations about branding and sexual abuse.
According to Bill, NXIVM’s analysis argued that being described as a cult had damaged its business. After reviewing the material, he rejected that explanation. He believed participants’ experiences and the negative word of mouth they generated offered a more convincing account.
This was familiar territory for me.
People enter a group believing its promises. Some discover deception or exploitation, leave, and warn others. The organization then blames its critics for the consequences.
That was part of my own experience after leaving the Moonies. I wanted people to know what had happened so they could avoid being harmed.
When a group attacks former members, I want to know whether it has seriously addressed what those people are saying. Calling criticism an attack does not answer it.
Crypto Adds Another Promise to the Recruitment Pitch
Bill was clear that he does not claim expertise in every aspect of cryptocurrency. His concern comes from examining schemes that combine crypto with recruitment-based compensation.
He described a pitch offering two potential rewards: buy an asset that promoters say will rise in value, and recruit others whose participation will also generate income for you.
The appeal is familiar. Get in early. Help your friends. Create the life your family deserves.
But Bill described a case in which the money flowed upward while compensation conditions made it difficult for participants to qualify for earnings. He called this “breakage”: conditions built into the arrangement that prevent promised rewards from reaching participants.
The possibility of an asset rising in price does not establish that the recruitment program is sound. People still need to understand who gets paid, under what conditions, and at whose expense.
In “Crypto Cults Are Scamming the Life Savings You Worked Years For,” I examined how financial hype, group loyalty, and the dismissal of doubt can reinforce one another. Bill’s account adds the perspective of someone who investigates the underlying business structure.
Who Protects the Public When Business Buys Influence?
Our conversation moved from recruitment to political power.
Bill discussed the MLM industry’s lobbying and political giving, including his comparisons of selected companies’ spending relative to their revenue. His concern was how strongly these businesses invest in influencing the rules under which they operate.
This connects with my conversation with Molly White in “Crypto Is Buying Your Democracy.” We discussed how the crypto sector’s political spending can affect consumer protections and public oversight.
Education matters, but individuals should not have to investigate every business opportunity entirely on their own. We need institutions capable of examining deceptive claims and holding powerful organizations accountable.
Bill now explores these broader questions with attorney Nancy Lasher on their podcast. We discussed economic insecurity, housing, and the uncertainty surrounding AI and employment. These pressures help explain why promises of an escape from financial struggle can be so compelling.
We also discussed Christian nationalism and efforts to control education and access to information. Bill emphasized local participation, including attention to school boards and libraries. I connected this with the warnings Frederick Clarkson and others have raised about organized efforts to build authoritarian power through local institutions.
Information control affects people’s ability to evaluate a financial pitch. It also affects their ability to participate in democracy.
There Are Things We Can Do
Bill sees reason for hope in former participants, researchers, attorneys, and social media educators who are challenging deceptive MLM claims. I share that hope. People speaking openly about their experiences help others recognize patterns they could not see before.
If someone you love is involved, begin with curiosity. Ask whether they would be willing to look at their income and expenses with you. Give them room to discuss disappointments without humiliation. Maintaining a trusted relationship can make it easier for them to reconsider.
If you are evaluating an opportunity yourself, take time away from the pitch. Seek information from people who do not benefit from your participation, including former members. Notice how the group responds when you ask questions or say no.
Bill closed by encouraging each of us to identify concrete things we can do to protect democracy and individual rights. That might mean sharing reliable information, supporting consumer education, or showing up at a local meeting.
I hope you will listen to our full conversation. Financial pressure and deception can leave people feeling powerless. Learning how these systems work—and helping one another examine them—is part of reclaiming our freedom of mind.
Resources
Profit, Power and Policy podcast with William Keep and Nacy Lasher
She Spent $115K in a Wellness Cult — My Conversation with Brandie Hadfield
Talking MLMs with Douglas Brooks
Multilevel Marketing and Consumer Protection
Multi-Level Marketing and Self-Help Cult Groups: Learn the Warning Signs
Crypto Cults Are Scamming the Life Savings You Worked Years For
Crypto Is Buying Your Democracy — My Conversation with Molly White
And check out the site for the MLM conference: Multi-level Marketing: The Consumer Protection Challenge
The one thing crypto, MLMs and Cults have in commen are compensators - intangible rewards promised to those who are recruited. While the nature of the compensator is different all share the promise of a reward that is always out of reach.